The present disclosure relates to a medical image display control apparatus, method, and program for generating and displaying an inner wall image representing an inner wall of a tubular organ of a subject.
Recently, it has been practiced to extract a hollow organ, such as a large intestine, a small intestine, a bronchus, or a blood vessel, from a three-dimensional image captured by a modality, such as a computed tomography (CT) system, and to use the three-dimensional image of the extracted hollow organ for image diagnosis.
In CT colonography, for example, a technique is proposed in which, based on a three-dimensional image of a large intestine region, a route of an endoscope passing through the large intestine region is determined, then a virtual endoscopic image similar to an image actually taken by an endoscope from a viewpoint while moving the viewpoint along the determined route is generated, and a route to a target point is navigated by displaying the virtual endoscopic image.
A virtual endoscopic image like that described above is an image representing the inner wall of a hollow organ like a large intestine and suited for observing a state of the lumen of a large intestine, but it is not suited for observing, for example, a blood vessel, fat, or a tumor inside the inner wall of the large intestine. Further, the virtual endoscopic image represents a surface state of the inner wall of a hollow organ and is not suited well for detecting a subtly raised polyp in comparison with the surrounding tissues, whereby a lesion may possibly be overlooked.
Hence, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 11(1999)-076228, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2008-054763, and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2005-349199 propose to display an organ present outside a hollow organ or the like, in virtual endoscopic image display, by projecting and displaying a maximum value present in a light ray direction of the virtual endoscopic image or an added value on the virtual endoscopic image.